The Basics - Polyamory

So, what's this Polyamory thing?

Polyamory: from the greek 'poly' for 'many'
and the latin 'amor' for 'love' - literally means 'many loves'

My personal definition :
The
philosophy of honestly, openly and responsibly choosing how many people
you can romantically love at the same time, rather than accepting social
norms which dictate loving only one person at a time. Another term for
polyamory is "responsible non-monogamy."

There is a wide range of what polyamory can mean to
different people, as love itself is a term with a wide range of
definitions. But the three major components of polyamory for me
are:

Love - This is a romantic/emotional love, that may or may not include
sexual/erotic intimacy (usually it does... but sex is not the focus).

Open - everyone involved knows what you're up
to - there's no hiding the relationships. Usually your partner(s) all
not only know about your other relationships, but they approve of them.
They usually know or may be friends with your other sweeties.
Heck, they may even be involved with them too.

Honest - Being truthful about your relationships,
feelings and expectations. (This requires being honest with yourself first
and foremost.)

Polyamory can take many forms, from
multiple people all living together and sharing day-to-day life together. Or
it could be an individual who is dating multiple people with no intention of
settling down with any one. Or it could be a primary couple who each have
other relationships, together or separately. Or perhaps it's an
interconnected network of people who are involved with each other. Or
perhaps it's a relationship form that I've not mentioned here.

Furthermore, polyamory is more of a
philosophy and approach to relationships than it is a practice. One does not
have to be having multiple relationships to be polyamorous. It's more of an
attitude of not forming intentionally monogamous relationships, and of
keeping the option of having more than one romantic relationship open.
Yes, this means a polyamorous person could be a 'single' person who is
currently in no relationships, providing that individual is not looking to
enter into a monogamous relationship.

But what polyamory is NOT is cheating.
One of the requirements of poly is that everyone involved knows about and
supports everyone's other relationships, usually even knows the
people.